Jobs
There
is not a lot to say right now but I feel that a new posting is due.
Weather-wise, spring is struggling to get the better of winter and
has been succeeding during the day with temperatures in the low 20s
from midday through to late afternoon, although the evenings are
still very cold. I've tried once again to capture on photo the blue
of the sky in mid-afternoon, a deep violet without a cloud n the sky.
It's a blue I have never seen in the sky anywhere else. The result is
below.
Because
of the weather I'm once again playing boules regularly but also
beginning a mental list of the jobs around the house that need doing.
In the garden I've cut down the clematises (is that the plural of
clematis?) but not done much else. I think I may have won my battle
with the Mairie to get the lime trees in front of my house pruned, if
only because on my last visit to the MairieI said that some of the
lower branches of one of the trees could hit a truck if a large one
happened to come by (they rarely do). Anyway, hiring some contractor
to do the work is apparently on the agenda. There's a lot of
preparatory work to be done for the spring but it is still slightly
early to do most of it other than clearing winter debris. In the
autumn I planted another 50-60 bulbs in various places out front and
they are coming through but have yet to bloom. If the trees get
pruned I'll pobably add another hanging basket in the front.
In the
house there is essentially little that has to be done, other than a
little clearing up and freshening things up, but both my son and my
daughter and family have sad they want to come, as have some friends.
I'm not house-proud (far from it some might say), but there are
several small jobs that would no doubt add to the pleasure of any
visitors. I'll get at least some of them done.
Nothing
much else is on the agenda until May, when I shall go with the
village team to the regional boules championships on the coast in the
Var. Then follows the merry-go-round of village festivities in June
and July, the pizza and moules-frites evenings in front of the Bar du
Pont, etc. It's a lot to look forward to.
Brexit
And Politics
As
ever, I'm still puzzling over Brexit and politics in the UK. If and
when I get French nationality this will all be academic to me but I
think that I will never entirely lose my UK roots. It seems to me
that when the Leave campaign made an appeal to nationalism half of
the UK population mislaid its brains. I had never realised how
powerful that appeal could still be. I've always cheered on the
England football team, if only half-heartedly at times, and wanted it
to whop the foreigners, but that is as far as it went. I had thought
that with so many Brits taking holidays abroad they must have
appreciated some things in other cultures. As one commenter put it
years ago, the Brits had been Romans but had become Italians. In
fact, it seems, they simply took Rome (Britain) with them and
transferred it temporarily to sunnier climes. I can understand why
those seriously deprived, a large number in Britain today, might find
the idea of radical change appealing, and why the message of hope
would be powerful. What I still fail to comprehend is the lack of
forethought and intelligence and the apparent complacency and
fatalism when the dream sold to Leavers has become so obviously a
lie. If I had been one of them I think I would not still be clinging
to the impossible dream but howling for the blood of those liars,
cheats and fraudsters who had sold me it
The
crux of the political problem in the UK seems to me that around half
of the population is essentially unrepresented. For the moment, the
Conservative party is irrevocably split and I can't see anything that
would genuinely unite it. A similar split is becoming ever more
apparent in the Labour party. The Conservative party seems
determined to deliver Brexit, no matter how. The Labour party seems
determined to force a general election which it's leader thinks he
will win, although current polls and events throw considerable doubt
on this. If there is to be an early general election, I would hope
for a hung Parliament, which would marginalise extremes in both
parties. Anything Parliament could then do would probably be not
much but would rely on consensus, which is nowhere around at the
moment when dogmas hold sway. In short, Britain’s future is at
stake but neither of the main political parties seems interested in
that, only in their own internal squabbles.
The
breakaway of Labour MPs was perhaps inevitable at some point. They
can have no hope of power and have put their country before their
party, among the first politicians to do so. If they form a party it
will have a short life, as all breakaway parties do, just waiting for
the main parties to come to their senses. While there is little
prospect of that happening the breakaway MPs may yet serve a useful
purpose for the country.
What I
find most dispiriting is that blatant lies, fraud and dubious ,at
best, arrangements (agreements, honours, contracts) based openly on
bribes and financial self-interests go virtually unchallenged and
seem to be accepted as the norm. I cannot accept that and, were I
still in the UK, would be tearing my hair out and howling, if no one
would listen than at the moon. A great deal has inevitably changed
during my lifetime but I have never known a time before when lies so
consistently were not exposed, when fraud was not penalised and when
cheating was assumed to be the norm. Why does an apparently large
proportion of the British population now apparently accept this and
not fight against it? That is what I cannot understand.
